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Thermo King Manufacturing Facility in Galway, Ireland with Zero Waste to Landfill

Press Release

Thermo King Manufacturing Facility in Galway, Ireland with Zero Waste to Landfill

16th August 2017

Brussels, August 16, 2017 – The Galway, Ireland manufacturing facility of Thermo King®, a manufacturer of transport temperature control solutions for a variety of mobile applications and a brand of Ingersoll Rand, became one of the first Ingersoll Rand sites to manage zero waste to landfill.

The sustainability push in the Thermo King Galway factory builds on the Ingersoll Rand Climate Commitment made in September 2014 to, among others, reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) related to its operations by approximately 35 percent by 2020.

Thermo King Galway is one of the brand’s most important manufacturing facilities. It currently employs more than 500 people, who build a wide range of Thermo King truck and trailer refrigeration units. Before achieving the zero waste milestone, the facility sent 230 tonnes of waste to landfill every year. Today, everything at the Galway site is recyclable, and recycling waste generated at the production stations like metal, plastic, cardboard or wood is part of standard work at the facility.

“Measures implemented at Galway have been effective and show that environmental sustainability is the right call for everyone, including our bottom line,” said Cormac Mac Donncha, operations director at Thermo King. “For example, we switched from using wooden pallets to reusable steel pallets for shipping finished product. This keeps pallets out of landfills, avoids the cost of recycling them and saves the facility over one million Euros each year.”

Notwithstanding, the Thermo King Galway facility continues their efforts to further improve the sustainability of their operations.

Most recent improvement is the installation of a rainwater harvesting facility to collect rainwater from the building’s 200,000-square-foot roof. The rainwater is used for toilet flushing and reduces the facility’s water usage by 50,000 litres (13,200 gallons) per month.

“The work doesn’t stop just because we’ve reached our zero waste to landfill goal. This is an ongoing process. We continue to look for alternative recycling methods and opportunities to further reduce our impact on the environment,” said Mac Donncha.

Ingersoll Rand made a commitment to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its products and operations by 2030. The company’s Climate Commitment pledges to:

Cut the refrigerant GHG footprint of its products by 50 percent by 2020 and incorporate lower global warming potential (GWP) alternatives across its portfolio by 2030;

Invest $500 million in product-related research and development over the next five years to fund the long-term reduction of GHG emissions; and

Reduce company operations-related GHG emissions by 35 percent by 2020.

To date, the commitment has supported the avoidance of approximately 2 million metric tons of CO2e globally, which is the equivalent of avoiding annual CO2 emissions from energy used in more than 270,000 homes or more than 2.1 billion pounds of coal burned. In support of the commitment, Ingersoll Rand launched EcoWise™, a portfolio of products designed to lower environmental impact with next-generation, low-global warming potential refrigerants and high efficiency operation. By 2030, the company expects to reduce its carbon footprint by 50 million metric tons.

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